THE European Union is like a huge powder magazine that started to smoulder even before the Brexit vote in the UK on June 23rd, and is now about to be blown apart as its inner contradictions become white hot and completely unbearable.
Yesterday, Italians voted in a referendum called by its hugely unpopular Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, to secure more powers for his government. He has already said that he will resign if he loses. A ‘No’ vote will see him resign.
The ‘No’ campaign is led by the Five Star Movement, which wants another referendum when the Renzi government is brought down, to take Italy out of the eurozone. Many Italians have been inspired by the Brexit mutiny in the UK of last June 23rd and want to emulate it today in Italy.
However, the fall of Renzi will mean not just a general election, and a new government – but also the collapse of the Italian banking system, with all of its implications for the rest of the EU and the world.
Senior bankers on the eve of the referendum result were seeking to put together a three-part rescue of the major Italian bank, Banca Monte dei Paschi de Siena, to prevent a new eurozone banking crisis.
Without the bail-out the bank will collapse along with much of the EU’s bankrupt banking system, a crash that has the power to spread worldwide. To the north of crisis-ridden Italy, Austria has also reached its moment of truth. Austrians yesterday were voting in a re-run of a presidential election which pits the leader of the far-right Freedom Party, Norbert Hofer, who Austrians openly term a fascist, against former Green Party head, Alexander Van der Bellen.
A vote last May was narrowly won by Van der Bellen, but the result was overturned by Austria’s highest court because of irregularities in the count. A win for Hofer will see the EU’s first fascist head of state, to go along with the right wing regimes that are rapidly emerging in the eastern part of the EU.
The next explosions will be France, the Netherlands and Germany – all facing crisis elections next year. In France the Socialists with their attempts to impose anti-trade laws onto the French trade unions have lost all credibility, leaving the field open to either the arch-Thatcherite Fillon, who has already pledged to do to the French trade unions what Thatcher did to the miners, or the openly racist National Front led by Marine Le Pen. The victory of either will mean civil war in France.
What is happening here is the definitive end of the dream of the rise of a European imperialist state, run by a professional bureaucracy in Brussels with a ‘European parliament’ as its harmless front, while it builds an EU army to rival the US, and continue Hitler’s policy of driving eastwards. This the EU attempted to do with its organisation of the coup d’etat in the Ukraine, and its attempts to return North Africa and Syria to a colonial status.
It is the desperate world crisis of capitalism, and the movement of the working class internationally that that has brought this dream, or nightmare, crashing down. With Britain’s demotion after the Second World War through its loss of empire, the UK ruling class sought respite by joining the European Economic Community, a free trade zone.
In time it got used to the idea of playing second fiddle to Germany and began to enjoy the role, pushing globalisation as far as jobs were concerned and bending the knee to the European Commission and Court. This policy came crashing down on June 23rd when Cameron made the mistake of the century when he called a referendum for the people to decide. This they did to the rage of EU collaborators in the Tory Party, the Labour Party and the TUC.
While the Blair-led insurgents will not rest until they re-secure the top paying EU jobs that saw Labourites become millionaires, the Tory Brexiteers see the future as becoming the favourite offshore island of Donald Trump. This is British imperialism on its knees, the ‘tragedy’ of its fall, turned into a farce.
British capitalism has no future except to plan to smash the NHS and all workers rights. The UK working class must act accordingly. It must take action to force parliament to withdraw from the EU and to defend the NHS. The way to do this is through the organisation of the British socialist revolution. This will be emulated all over Europe and replace the EU with the Socialist United States of Europe.